Excerpt:

Well, we’re laughing. Don’t we count? The reason we laugh is that, first of all, even if it were true, this would be a fairly modest achievement. Halving a deficit you inherited would be something to brag about. Halving a deficit you created, not so much. You don’t see Bush’s former chief domestic policy adviser Claude Allen boasting that he has returned half the merchandise he filched from Target. 

Second, it’s not true. In 2004, the Bush administration released a suspiciously high deficit projection for 2004. Every other sentient budget analyst at the time said the number was inflated. (The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, for instance, wrote, “The Administration appears to have noticeably overstated the deficit for the current year, 2004.”) Why would it inflate the number? So that when the real figure came in below its phony prediction, it could claim progress. The trick was utterly obvious at the time.